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Civil War #7

A Matter of Honor

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As the Civil War rages on, Texas gunslinger Captain "Dusty" Fog defends a Yankee wrongly court-martialed for cowardice, during which he learns about a secret weapon that the Union army plans to use on his troops

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1982

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About the author

J.T. Edson

183 books79 followers
John Thomas Edson is an English writer of Westerns.

He was born in 1928.He was obsessed with Westerns from an early age and often "rewrote" cowboy movies that he had seen at the cinema. One thing that always intrigued him was the minutiae—how did the baddie's gun jam? What were the mechanics of cheating at cards? How did Westerners really dress and speak?

His writing was helped to develop by a schoolteacher who encouraged him. Now lives in Leicester, Leicestershire.[citation needed]

During his 20s and 30s, Edson served in His Majesty's Armed Forces for 12 years as a Dog Trainer. Cooped up in barracks for long periods, he devoured books by the great escapist writers (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert McCraig, Nelson C. Nye and Edgar Wallace). He also sat through hours of movies starring John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Errol Flynn and his all-time favourite, Audie Murphy.

His first appearance in print was "Hints On Self-Preservation when attacked by a War Dog" in the Osnabrück camp magazine Shufti in 1947. Acquiring a typewriter in the early 1950s and putting it to good use while posted to Hong Kong, by the time of his discharge he had written 10 Westerns, an early version of Bunduki and the first of the short detective-type stories starring Waco.

Upon leaving HM forces, JT won second prize (with Trail Boss) in the Western division of a Literary Competition run by Brown & Watson Ltd, which led to the publication of 46 novels with them, becoming a major earner for the company.

He had the need for supplementary income from time-to-time and also served as a postman, and the proprietor of a fish 'n' chip shop. Furthermore, he branched out as a writer and wrote five series of short stories (Dan Hollick, Dog Handler) for the Victor boys papers, and wrote the "box captions" for comic strips, which instilled discipline and the ability to convey maximum information with minimum words.


His writing career forged ahead when he joined Corgi Books in the late '60s, which gave JT exposure through a major publishing house, as well as the opportunity to branch out from the core Westerns into the Rockabye County, the science-fiction hero Bunduki and other series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._T._Edson

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
862 reviews2 followers
March 15, 2018
Great!

A well written novel that is exciting and interesting as well as intriguing in most aspects. The editing of the book could have been better.
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139 reviews8 followers
January 24, 2014
Only Dusty Fog would volunteer to testify at the court martial of an enemy. But then having fought the battle on the other side he did have a front row seat for the incident. This book is an expansion of the short story The Futility of War from The Fastest Gun in Texas. The accused, Union Lieutenant Kirby Cogshill, later makes an appearance in Cuchilo. Another character who later pops up in the floating outfit series is new recruit Cy Bollinger who helps Dusty out in Quiet Town and also appears in The Trigger Master. Once again JT stretched a perfectly good short story (one of the best in the Civil War series) into a full-length book when he really should have left it alone. Adding a rather far-fetched Belle Boyd plot (really just an excuse for a couple of his girl fight scenes) and a Union plot to assassinate Lincoln did nothing positive for the original storyline.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews